


The Five by Five Job

by gnar-slabdash (spaceboy)



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alternate Universe - Leverage, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27872146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboy/pseuds/gnar-slabdash
Summary: Former Watcher Nathan Ford is spiraling toward rock bottom when an old friend arrives to offer him an opportunity: Rescue a kidnapped Slayer (*cough*Parker*cough*) and make enough money not to die a homeless drunk. Along the way, we meet the rest of the crew, who also have cool new Buffyverse roles! Also it's the nineties, because how could I pass up an opportunity to write a nineties story? (Concept initially sparked by @spoopy-miakitty on tumblr!)
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Amy Palavi/Parker, Nathan Ford/Eliot Spencer, Sophie Devereaux/Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	1. Just When I Thought I Was Out. . .

The man's clothes had once been nice, probably very expensive, actually, but they were frayed and stained and didn’t smell particularly good, although he himself had at least had a shower recently, as evidenced by his slightly damp curls. The hotel bar was as upscale as the clothes had once been, and even had a closed patio outside where he could have sat in the afternoon light of a warm L.A. autumn. But he preferred it in here at the counter, facing the mirrored back wall and lines of bottles glinting softly in a constant low light that meant it could be any time at all. He liked places like this. Bars, airports, 24-hour convenience stores. Places where time wasn’t quite real.

See, if time wasn’t real, then the past wasn’t real.

Also, if time wasn’t real, then getting drunk before five o’clock wasn’t a real problem. 

He wasn’t a huge fan of _mirrors_ though, so instead of looking outside, and instead of looking ahead of him, he kept his eyes down, very seriously contemplating the nearly-empty lowball glass in front of him. The question at hand was whether he had the money for another one, and if not, how long he could keep putting them on his hotel tab before somebody figured out that he was definitely not going to be able to _pay_ that tab. Getting the room had probably been a bad idea, but he couldn’t stand another day without a shower, and the money was going to run out one way or another. In the end, he had had decided he might as well use it up on something nicer than a tank of gas and a six pack. 

As if by magic, as he considered his almost-empty glass, a second, full glass appeared in front of him. He put out a hand automatically to take it, and only then looked up, and realized two unfortunate facts at once. 

First, that the glass _had_ actually appeared by magic. Second, that the _reason_ it had appeared was named Jim Sterling. 

“You wanna be turning around and going right back to whatever Krathlak hole you crawled out of, Sterling.”

“Or you’ll do what, exactly, Nathan?” Sterling retorted, unconcerned by the threat. “Puke on me?” He perched on the next barstool over, and materialized a matching drink for himself. 

“I was thinking more like ‘punch you right in your slimy backstabbing mouth,’ but you know, no reason I couldn’t do both.” Despite the threat, Nate made no move to do anything other than take advantage of the fact that he now had a free drink.

Sterling just shook his head. “Still hanging onto your conspiracy theory? What’s it going to take to prove to you that the Watchers’ Council had nothing to do with what happened to Samantha?”

“I dunno, some _proof_ , maybe? Yeah, I think that’d do it.”

“You’ve seen everything, the records are open.”

“And none of it was proof.”

Sterling shook his head and sighed. “One of these days you're going to have to accept that it was a terrible thing, but that doesn't make it our fault. Slayers die, Nate. It comes with the job.”

Nate slammed the glass back down on the counter hard enough that the liquor sloshed over the edge. He turned for the first time to look straight at Sterling.

“Did you _actually_ come here to fight me, cause that's _really_ what it's starting to sound like, and that's _definitely_ what you're gonna get if you keep running your mouth about her.”

Sterling leaned back on his stool and raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Okay, okay. No, that's not what I'm here for. Believe it or not, I'm here to extend an officially sanctioned olive branch from the Council."

"Yeah, right. Thanks, but no thanks."

“Really. So, how long do you think you’ll be able to keep racking up your hotel bill before they ask you to _pay_ it? And what’s your plan for when that happens? You always have a plan, don’t you?”

“I'll figure it out. What’s your _point_?”

“My point is, that you’re an inch from rock bottom, and I'm here throwing you a rope.”

Nate laughed. What else could he do? “Yeah, and what’s this rope made of, souls of orphan children?”

“I'd _tell_ you if you'd just stop being such a -- such a _you_ for thirty seconds and _listen_.”

Nate shrugged, deceptively calm all of a sudden. “Okay. Thirty seconds.” He shook back the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch. His wrist was bare. He had pawned the Rolex weeks ago. “Ah, right. Well, I can count to thirty all on my own. Start talking.”

“Summers is dead.”

“Again.”

“Again. Probably for good this time, but who can tell with her. But that’s not important --”

“ _Another dead child isn’t important?_ ”

“She’s not a _child,_ Nate, and _you_ said you would let me talk.”

Their voices were raised, too much for the space, and the bartender was giving them a dirty look, about to come over and give them a warning. Nate hunched his shoulders and picked up his glass, hand shaking with anger, but not enough to slosh the drink over the side again, so he decided to call that a win. Anybody else, he would have decked by now, and Sterling for sure deserved it, but a) he still wanted to know where the hell this was going, and b) he still couldn’t _quite_ bring himself to actually want to hurt Sterling, after all this time. 

“Then talk.”

“You know what we determined, after the first time she died. We did the research, we argued, we drank obscene amounts of tea -- ”

“ _Your_ people drank obscene amounts of tea, _I_ drank coffee like a normal person.”

“ _Stop interrupting!_ And we decided for sure, no doubt about it, that the way it would work, was that the Slayer line would run through Young from now on, so when Summers died for good we’d be back to status quo, one Slayer, no problems. Right?”

“Oh no. Ohhh no. This had sure better not be going where I think it’s going.”

“We were wrong.”

“ _Yep_. Times up.” He stood up, drained his glass, remembered that there had still been a swallow left in his first glass and drank that too, and made his way out of the bar toward the hotel lobby. It would have been a more firm and definitive gesture if he had been able to walk a straighter line. Sterling huffed and followed after him, catching up fast and talking faster. 

“Nate, there’s a new Slayer, and she needs a watcher _immediately_ , and the council -- ”

“No. I'm done."

"You don't have to _stay_ , this is a one-time thing."

"So, what, you want me to, ah, you want me to be the one to go bring her into the fold, and then leave her so somebody _else_ can teach her how to get herself killed? No. I am done putting these girls in danger.”

“Damn it, Nate, our _problem_ is that she is _already_ in danger. She's _missing_. We have a few ideas about who might have gotten to her before us, and all of them are _bad_. All I’m asking, is for you to _find her_ and get her _out_.”

Nate stopped in the doorway between the bar and the lobby. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, giving himself one last respite before diving into the maelstrom. "Okay," he said, with an overwhelming sense that he was making a deal with a possibly literal devil. "I'll do it."


	2. Klingons at the Alloy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate investigates the Seattle nightclub where Parker was last seen, and gets the deets from a friend of hers.....

The last point of contact was a club in Seattle called The Alloy. All Sterling could or would tell him was that the She had been there Friday night, there had been some kind of fight, and she hadn't been seen since. So that was the place to start. Sterling had a flight pre-booked for him, a hotel room waiting for him, and a Council-paid credit card for expenses. "And for the love of God please consider a new suit part of your expenses," Sterling had added with a disgusted look at Nate's formerly-fashionable outfit. So when he set out for The Alloy he was better dressed, fed, and rested than he had been in ages -- not that any of those things could loosen the knot in his stomach that told him this had been a very bad decision.

The sky was grey. The pavement was grey. Between the crowd of grey buildings he caught glimpses of Puget Sound, which was, yes, grey. The whole city felt faded and dull. Nate felt like he fit right in -- especially when he rounded a corner and came upon the dumpster fire that had been the Alloy until two days ago.

It was a long, low warehouse with a huge cartoonish skull painted across half the facade. The mural looked like it had probably been brightly colored once, but it was now the same sooty-looking charcoal color as the rest of the building. The sooty look came, of course, from the soot. The soot, the blown out windows, and the collapsed roof on the left side of the building told the story. Whatever had happened on Friday night, Nate cleverly deduced, it had been a lot more than a "fight."

The big industrial doors were plastered with layers of hand-printed band flyers, but on top of all of them was taped a single sheet of notebook paper, sharpied with the words "CLOSED DUE TO FUCKERY. LATER, HOME SKILLET." The doors, however, were unlocked, and Nate walked right in.

The inside of the building had fared worse than the outside by a level of magnitude. The basic structure was virtually unharmed, but the floor was a sea of rubble. What had once been a stage was now a forest of broken boards, trashed stereo equipment, and tangled cords. To reach it, Nate had to pick his way around splintered furniture, over lakes of shattered glass, and between the fallen beams of a balcony which, to be fair, had probably never been up-to-code in the first place.

A team made up mostly of old hippies and grunge kids was scattered throughout the place, working on the first stages of clean-up. The first stages of clean-up looked like they mostly involved a) sweeping garbage and broken glass from one place to another seemingly at random, b) piling boards in one corner and damaged equipment in another, and c) an awful lot of standing around with arms crossed or hands on hips, surveying the damage and shaking heads sadly without actualy doing anything about it.

Nate reached the stage and paused to watch a young Black man in a purple T-shirt and loose jeans, trying to salvage what he could of the sound equipment. Unlike everyone else, he was trying to _do_ something with the equipment. In fact, it looked like he was trying to set it up to _play_ something, which Nate was fairly certain was a lost cause, since everything was singed and the speakers had stripped wires bursting out of them here and there. Nonetheless, after a moment the young man dropped a needle onto a turntable and stepped back triumphantly as the record began to spin and -- absolutely nothing else happened.

"Got a minute?" Nate asked at this choice moment.

"Does it look like I got a minute?" he retorted.

"It looks like you've, ah, you've got your cords plugged into Speakers A and your switch set for Speakers B, is what it looks like."

"What? No way man, what kinda loser do you think I --" Nonetheless, he glanced at the cords, blinked, looked again, and groaned. "I did not do that. Just so we're clear, I did not set that up that way." He flicked the switch to the correct side, and a rock song blared from the speakers, greeted by scattered cheers and applause from the "helpers" milling around the building.

"Of course you didn't, no. But look," said Nate, "I'm not actually here to help you with basic sound engineering. I'm looking for somebody who was here Friday, I was wondering if you'd seen this girl." He held out the photo Sterling had given him of the Slayer.

"What are you, a cop?" the man said automatically, before even looking up to see the photo Nate held out to him. When he did look, he saw two things that changed his tone immediately. The first was the picture, a blurry Polaroid of a young blonde who appeared to be flipping off the photographer. The second was that the man who had approached him, who had been flippantly correcting his setup thirty seconds ago, was now on the verge of tears.

"No, I'm not a cop," Nate said, voice shaking deliberately. "I'm her father."

"No shit?" said the young man in a skeptical sort of awe. "I mean -- you're _Parker's_ _dad_? I didn't know she even -- I mean --" he cut himself off, but it was easy enough to tell what he had been about to say.

"Yeah, well. . . . you know, I wasn't -- I didn't do a very good job at the whole dad thing and she, ah, she ran away a long time ago. But she called on Friday morning, and she, she said she wanted to give me another chance. We were supposed to meet on Saturday but she -- she never showed and then I heard about what happened here. . . . Nobody _died_ , though, right? That's what the paper said."

"Yeah, no, man, for sure, she's not dead, nobody's dead, but -- but okay, look, we gotta -- we gotta sit down and talk about this, uh -- " He glanced over toward where there had once been a bar. Two volunteers were making a half-assed attempt at sweeping up the glass of a hundred shattered bottles from behind the cracked counter. There was not a single stool intact. He shrugged and sat down on the edge of the stage instead, and patted the space next to him. Nate joined him, all too happy to mess up the new suit and bill Sterling for yet another one.

"I'm Hardison, by the way. Alec Hardison. I'm a -- well, I'm sort of a friend of Parker's."

"Nate Ford. I'm glad to hear she's got at least one decent friend around here."

"Parker has a last name? Parker _Ford_?" He grimaced. "No offense. I just liked the one-name-only woman-of-mystery thing."

"Yeah, well," Nate sighed. "I wish she were a little _less_ of a woman-of-mystery once in a while. So do you know where she is?"

Hardison made a frustrated huffing noise and leaned his head back to look up at the ceiling, only for a big drop of water to fall through a crack in the roof and straight into his eye. "So here's the thing," he said as he tried to wipe the water out of his eye. "Parker, she -- she hangs around with a pretty rough crowd. I've told her, I've -- I've _tried_ to tell her they're no good, but what would she listen to me for? I'm just the sound guy."

Nate looked away, feigning worry while hiding a smile. So that's this kid's deal, he thought. _He's got a crush on her._ "And these guys she's hanging out with had something to do with what happened on Friday?"

"Yeah. Parker got here early on Friday cause we -- cause she did, that's all. And then her friends showed up later, and they had these -- these _guys_ with them. Like, motorcycle-gang-looking guys. And I swear these 'friends' pointed her out to them and they went over and just grabbed her and these fuckers -- sorry, these jackasses -- sorry, these 'friends' of hers, they just _bailed_ , they just left her to take on these guys."

"So you're -- you're telling me they -- what, they beat her up? They kidnapped her?" Nate ran his hands through his hair, a calculated nervous gesture that also made him look more disheveled than he really was.

The sound guy laughed. Nate didn't have to _pretend_ to be shocked by that, it was a wholly inappropriate response. "No way. You haven't seen her in a while, have you? She _kicked their asses_ , it was fly as shit -- sorry. But I mean, there were a lot of them, they gave her a run for her money and uh, she uh. . . . look, she wasn't _trying_ to, you know, to burn the place down, but, uh, she grabbed some girl's hairspray and a lighter, you know, to fight back with and uh, it worked a little _too_ well, and that's how all...... _this....._ happened." He gestured broadly at the entire blasted-out building. "Parker basically burned down the club."

Nate looked around, genuinely impressed. Internally, he was cracking up and congratulating the new Slayer on how this had gone down. Externally, he still had to play concerned. "So she's okay?"

Hardison's face fell. "I'm sorry, man. There were just too many of them; I helped her get out the back into the alley and there were _more_ of them out there and they -- they got her into a car and took off. I'm sorry."

Nate buried his face in his hands, playing despair while buying time to work out the next move. He was startled out of his thoughts by a hand on his back. He looked up and found Hardison awkwardly attempting to pat his shoulder in comfort. Nate gave him a "what the _fuck_ are you doing?" look that worked well enough for Hardison to drop the hand and shrug, embarassed.

"Did you get the license plate number?" Nate asked. "Or anything distinguishing about these guys?"

Hardison hesitated. "So, look, there was something but -- you're not gonna believe it."

"We're talking about my _daughter_ , Hardison. Whatever will help me _find_ her, I'll believe it."

"If you say so. The thing is, these guys, they were -- not regular -- people. They were something else."

"What are you talking about? What do you mean 'something else?'"

"I'm talking about -- like -- ok, look, man, they weren't _human._ they were like, monsters, their faces were all weird like -- like Klingons, actually. Maybe they were Klingons."

" _Klingons_?"

"You know, Klingons, from Star Trek? Come on, everybody knows Klingons, it's not _that_ geeky."

"No, I know what a Klingon is, but they're, ah, _fictional_ , you know that, right? You're telling me that club got attacked by Klingons? Did they shoot anybody with their _phasers?_ "

"You _said_ you'd believe me!"

"I didn't realize what you were going to say was that she was abducted by _aliens_."

"I wasn't being literal! I don't think they were really Klingons. I just think they _looked_ like Klingons and there was something _off_ about them. Sorry, man, that's all I got."

"Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. You've been very helpful. At least as helpful as anyone can be." Nate sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. "Have you talked to anybody else about this?"

"No way, I don't wanna get Parker in trouble, and nobody's gonna believe me about these monster guys anymore than you do."

"Okay." That was good, he didn't want anybody getting in the way. "Look, do you know where I can find these 'friends' of hers?"

"I mean, I know where they hang out, but it's probably not a good idea to _go_ there. Like I said, they're a rough crowd."

"I'll be careful. Where can I find them?"

"No way. if you're gonna go find them, you shouldn't go alone. You oughtta have backup, somebody who knows them. Especially with the way you, uh, the way you come off, you know? _I'm_ still half-convinced you're a cop. They'll never talk to you."

"You're saying you want to come along?"

"No, I'm _saying_ nobody should go, but I'm also saying if you _are_ gonna go, you better take me along. And besides, I want to make sure Parker's okay too."

"Don't you have work to do here?"

"Sure, technically, but it was already a pretty casual place _before_ it got set on fire."

"All right," Nate shrugged. He didn't want to get Hardison mixed up in all this, but he did have to admit that these 'friends' of Parker's probably were not going to want to talk to him alone. He'd let Hardison tag along -- just long enough to talk to these 'friends,' and not a minute longer.


	3. Roasting Amy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nate encounters 90s youth culture.

The wisdom of letting Hardison tag along became evident as soon as they reached the place shared by the gang. It was in walking distance of the club, in the same industrial district, in a smaller warehouse that probably would have been much dingier than the Alloy, if the Alloy hadn't recently been neary burned down.

The inside of the place was trashed, in the most decadent teen-culture way imaginable. Pizza boxes and liquor bottles overflowed the big plastic trash bin by the door, and cigarette butts carpeted the floor. Kids crowded around a worn pool table in one corner and a lopsided foosball table opposite. Others lounged on sagging furniture in the middle of the room, their limbs tangled together as they talked or made out.

Nate had to admit he was taken aback to find that a place like this existed outside of an after-school special. And as someone who took pride in his ability to fit in just about anywhere, he was hyper aware of how utterly impossible it was for him to look like he belonged anywhere near here. That would be the worst 21 Jump Street episode ever.

"I know, right?" said Hardison, "It totally looks like the Foot Clan hideout or something, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, something like that." Nate had been thinking more like a modern opium den, but he paid just enough attention to pop culture to recognize what Hardison was saying.

Their arrival sent a nervous ripple through the knots of kids. A few of the ones sitting on the couches extricated themselves from the furniture and each other, and made their way over to Nate and Hardison. The obvious leader of the group was a swaggering but startlingly short brown-skinned girl with a spiky pixie cut. She stopped in front of them, a hand on her hip, cracking her gum as she looked them over. Even though she had to tilt her head back to look up at them, she had such a self-assured presence that it felt like she was looking down on them. "Oh look, the nerd brought his grampa," she sneered. "Whadayawant, geezer?"

Hardison flinched, but he covered it fairly well, leaning back and crossing his arms, looking off like he was only there by chance. Funny, after all his big talk about being able to get along with this crowd. What a liar. Nate was starting to like him.

"I'm looking for my daughter." He flashed them the picture, even though he already knew they knew her. Might as well lean into the clueless geezer thing. "Parker. I heard she was a friend of yours."

 _That_ caused even more of a stir in the room than their arrival had, but the girl in front kept her cool. She stomped a Doc Marten down on the foot of a guy behind her, who looked like he was about to blurt something out. "Yeah," she said coolly, "we see her around. We're not like BFFs or whatever."

"Well, would you know who _is_ her 'BFF' then, young lady?"

She spat her gum on his shoe. "Call me that again and I'll punch you in the dick."

However Nate might have responded to this, he never got a chance, because Hardison jumped in between them, towering over the girl but still looking like she could snap him like a twig. "Look, Amy, I saw what happened at the Alloy and I saw those -- those -- _guys_ you were with and I saw you _let_ them jump her, what do you have to say about that?"

Amy raised a pierced eyebrow. "I'd say it's none of your beeswax, nerd."

That was enough banter for one day, Nate decided. These kids had the answers -- or at least Amy did -- and he was done beating around the bush about it. And he had seen enough of Amy already to have a pretty good idea of what he needed to do to cut this Gordian Knot.

"Amy, actually, we don't have to talk about that yet. I have a couple other questions I want to run by you first, if you don't mind." He proceeded, however, without waiting in any way for her to indicate whether she minded. "This is your place, right? I like what you've done with the grafitti, nice touch with the Nirvana lyrics. I'm not sure how Kurt would feel about those pre-ripped designer jeans you're wearing, though. . . . Do, ah, do your parents know you're spending what is I imagine a rather _considerable_ trust fund on this place? And by the way, where did you get that haircut? It's just it's probably a _very_ nice place and I could use a decent haircut too. Oh, oh, no, I'm sorry, did you tell your friends here that you did it yourself?"

As he continued, a few scared stifled titters broke out the back of the room, then grew to bold guffaws, including a few from Amy's inner circle. At this point, Amy had two options: Lose her shit, and her crew -- or laugh. And Amy, as he had been counting on, was smart enough to laugh.

"Okay, okay, very funny," she said firmly when she had finished her only partially performative laugh. "You're _really_ Parker's old man?"

"Yeah, I really am."

"Come on, then, let's talk up here." She led them across the hall and up a set of iron stairs to a loft along one wall that she had set up as a bedroom, cozy and plastered with posters and yet significantly cleaner than the rest of the building. She looked uncertain about Hardison joining them, but decided not to argue. She sat down on the edge of the bed and twisted her hands together, and for the first time looked like a real teenager instead of posing as a tough guy, and for the first time, looked worried. "I'm not proud of what we did to Parker, but we had to," she said, dropping the slangy style as well and confirming Nate's guess about her background. "Those guys weren't. . . normal."

"That's what I said!" declared Hardison triumphantly. Nate waved at him to shut up, but Amy nodded. "Yeah. I don't know, they were _monsters_ or something, their faces got all fucked up and they said they were gonna _kill_ us, and look, I know we're kind of tough guys but we don't get into _that_ , actually almost nobody around here does, Seattle's a pretty safe town considering. And I couldn't -- I love these kids but -- "

"You love these kids, but not _Parker?_ "

Amy flinched. "Yes, Parker too. But she wasn't -- like -- she didn't come out of her shell much. She wasn't really _one_ of us cause she didn't _want_ to be. We liked her. I liked her. A lot. But for some reason she's who these creeps wanted and there was nothing we could do about it _anyway_. All we did was invite her to the Bronze."

"And then _abandon_ her?"

"It's not like we really could _fight them_ or anything. You should have seen them, you can't _imagine_ \--"

"Parker did," Hardison interrupted, a strange strain of emotion in his voice that Nate couldn't quite place.

"Yeah, well, Parker's . . . . something else." She looked up at Nate. "Are you really her dad? She just kinda. . . . showed up out of the blue and just kinda got weirder and weirder and -- she can -- do things. Crazy things. Do you _know?_ Do you know what's going on?"

"I know some of it. But mostly I just want to find her. Do you know where I can find these, ah --"

" _Monsters_ ," said Amy, at the same time that Hardison said " _Klingons_."

"Whatever," said Nate. "Where can I find them?"


	4. Meanwhile. . . .

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot and Parker chill in Disneylandey dungeon cells.

Parker didn't know where she was, but she knew she did not like it here.

The cell was a ten by ten square, which was bigger than some places Parker had lived, and it was completely empty except for a nook in the back where a perfectly modern white porcelain toilet was housed just out of sight. Stone walls surrounded her on three sides, except they weren't really stone. They were plaster molded in the shape of stone, just like the floor was linoleum designed to look like flagstone. The fourth wall was a row of iron bars, with a giant padlock hanging on the outside. It was a stupid padlock that she could have picked in two seconds, except that when she tried to reach between the bars to get it, they glowed bright blue and she fell backwards onto her butt on the stupid linoleum. It must have some kind of force field like on one of the sci-fi shows Hardison was always trying to get her to come over and watch with him. 

In short, everything about the cell that she was in was _fake_. Fake walls, fake bars. Fake torches outside the bars were the only light, but they gave off a lot more light than they looked like they should. There was even straw on the floor, and it seemed to be real straw, but it was the _cleanest_ straw she had ever seen. The whole place was much cleaner than she would have expected, which made it feel even more fake. It was like Disneyland, if they had cells in Sleeping Beauty's Castle that they could lock up naughty children in. Which might be a good thing for them to add, now that she thought of it. 

There were no guards outside the cell. In fact, at first Parker thought she was completely alone. But when she approached the bars again -- careful this time to stay far enough away to avoid setting off the force field -- she realized there was one other person nearby. Across the hall from her was an identical cell, and exactly in the center of that cell a man was sitting cross-legged. He was so still and so silent that Parker wasn't sure at first that he wasn't a statue or a broken animatronic, to go along with the Disneyland vibe. But he couldn't be, she realized, because he was _dirty_. His long hair hung matted and tangled over his face, his clothes were ripped and clothes and skin both were covered in dark patches that might be mud or might be something else. There was no way that whoever built this place also built _that_. In fact she was surprised they let that _in_ here. Though come to think of it, she wasn't looking too good herself, with her hair singed from the fire and a few bruises still left from the fight. 

"Hey," Parker hissed across the hall, "Are you awake?"

There was no answer. She tried again. "Hey, what are you doing?"

This time the man gave a long sigh, opened his eyes, and said "I _was_ meditating."

"Oh. Sounds boring. Hey, what is this place? Some kind of off-brand theme park for monsters?"

"Basically," he said laconically, and closed his eyes again. But Parker wasn't about to let it go at that.

"No, seriously, do you know what's going on here? Cause I got _nothin_. One minute I'm hanging out at the Alloy, the next minute I'm getting jumped by weirdos, and now I'm here. What gives?"

"You're not going to leave me alone until I answer, are you?"

"Nope!"

"Fine. Fine, I'll be Mr. Exposition, but you have to promise you won't say anything dumb about how you're not in Kansas anymore, okay?"

"I've never been to Kansas. Why would I be in Kansas?"

"Good. Okay, step one: Vampires are real."

She thought about that for a moment, putting it together with what she'd seen in the last couple of days. "Okay, yeah, that tracks. So?"

The man across the hall raised his eyebrows and inclined his head, mildly impressed with her reaction. "So, step two: There are Chosen Ones called Slayers, who fight vampires. And according to the goons who dragged you in here, _you're_ the new Slayer."

"Huh." She shrugged. "Sure, whatever. But where _are_ we?"

"You're supposed to be a little more impressed by all of this."

"Oh. Like this?" Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped into a horrible caricature of surprise. "WOW!!!"

"Jesus, do not do that again. Nevermind, you don't have to be impressed. You're not going to live long enough to do any slaying anyway, because where we _are_ , is the Arena. We're here so the bad guy vampires can make us fight each other and take bets on who ends up dead. And no offense, it's great that you're the slayer and all, but they're gonna make you fight _me_ , and of the two of us, I promise I'm _not_ gonna be the one who gets dead."


End file.
